West Fraser Acquires Another U-S Mill
Prince George, B.C. – West Fraser Timber is announcing the acquisition of sawmill and lumber manufacturing operations in Arkansas.
West Fraser bought the sawmill in Mansfield, Arkansas from Travis Lumber Company, which has operated there since 1988 and pumped out over 100 million board feet of lumber in 2013. West Fraser plans to invest money to boost the annual production to 150 million board feet.
West Fraser already owns and operates two sawmills in Arkansas as well as other mills in Taxes and Louisiana. Company President and CEO Ted Seraphim says “we’re delighted with this growth opportunity in the U.S. south and we welcome our new employees to the West Fraser organization.
The company is closing its mill in Houston, B.C. in May as part of the timber harvesting tenure exchange that it entered into with Canfor last fall. The reason cited for the closure was a lack of fibre supply. The Houston mill employed 225 people. For its part Canfor announced the closure this month of its sawmill in Quesnel and offered to provide its 209 employees there with positions elsewhere in the company. Canfor said the Quesnel closure is due to limited timber availability caused by the mountain pine beetle infestation.
Comments
Sounds like Canfor! Shut a few down buy a couple more!!!
Timber grows faster in Arkansas than it does in northern BC. Another factor is that Canadian forest products companies buying out US ones tends to fracture the strength of the US lumber lobby against Canadian softwood lumber imports.
Grows faster , that’s a good thing?. I could drive a deck screw through the wood with a Q tip. I wonder what the real reasons are ?
It’s a good thing when you’re short of fibre, or will be soon. It’s not that long ago that BC lodgepole pine was considered a weed species, not even worth cutting into lumber. Same with that local pine crap in Arkansas. It’s cheap, and plentiful, and that’s all that matters. That, and you can’t get any opposition from the south-eastern US lumber lobby against greater Canadian softwood exports when you’ve bought them all out. Interfor is doing the same thing with the US west sawmills.
Comments for this article are closed.